


In Whiskey Veritas

by justmyluckiness



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol, Brooding, F/F, Friendship, St. Patrick's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justmyluckiness/pseuds/justmyluckiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does a brooding vampire to do on St. Patrick's Day? Go to Styria's only Irish pub, of course! But why would a vampire brood when Laura Hollis is waiting at home for her? Danny Lawrence shows up wanting the answer to just that question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Whiskey Veritas

**Author's Note:**

> This is a RE-POST! I was in a hurry to get this posted for St. Patrick's Day, but I wasn't happy with how it turned out. My deepest apologies to those who already read this and gave kudos, but I just wasn't satisfied with the original story, so I pulled it down to tweak. 
> 
> This is my first real foray into this wonderful fandom, so I hope I have done these characters justice. This is a little silly, but I had a ton of fun writing it. While it doesn't directly contradict anything from the show, it fills in some gaps. 
> 
> No betas were harmed in the making of this story. All mistakes are mine. Any resemblances to any real people, places, or characters is entirely coincidental.

Carmilla Karnstein had been to pubs all over the world but her current watering hole was by far the strangest. Most of Styria could be described as ‘by far the strangest’, but this pub was one of the weirdest places of Styria. Like many other pubs its exterior was done over in mostly dark wood tones with _Cú Chulainn_ in gold lettering above the door, large windows on either side of the outside wall, and a few tables scattered outside for anyone daring enough to brave the bizarre weather phenomena that seemed to plague Styria.

She pushed the door open and gazed around the interior as the real weirdness of the place hit her like a two-by-four. Barely inside and Carmilla had to clear her head to discern that the high-pitched furor to her right was actually a group of faeries at a window table arguing about which one of them was the most beautiful.

 _Fucking divas_ , she snorted to herself. _Why are faeries always divas? Tiny little semi-magical beings shouldn’t be that arrogant._

In front of her was the main seating area. Various tables around her held beings that would have caused an uproar almost anywhere else in the world if they had been seen but in Styria didn’t even cause a raised eyebrow.

She moved through tables, edging around patrons and dodging the dryad waitresses on her way to the bar area. One large and two smaller pieces of oak formed a semi-circle against the back wall, leaving a rectangular area for the bartender to move back and forth to serve clients. The back wall was entirely covered with shelf upon shelf of liquor bottles, like most other pubs, with one large exception. A support pillar divided the mirrored wall in half: on the left were the vodkas, tequilas, whiskies, and other worldly spirits while on the right were magical cordials, nectars, ambrosias, and other otherworldly refreshments for the pub’s supernatural clientele. When the vampires moved into the area, the proprietor started keeping a wine fridge well-stocked with different gourmet types and species of blood, a move that had garnered a huge amount of goodwill and a general promise that the pub’s employees were off-limits for snacking.

The oaken bar clashed with the rest of the furniture. In an effort to appease as many species as possible, the tables and chairs were all fiberboard or plastic, but the bar itself was actual wood. When the first few months of the pub’s existence saw a perpetual group of dryads clustered to one corner perpetually weeping and stroking the wood, the owner put up a notice certifying that the wood came from a non-magical tree farmed specifically for the purpose, but the dryads kept mourning.

Sidestepping around a table of witches to her left – she’d learned to go out of her way to avoid any beings with power over magic, including witches, wizards, and warlocks on prior visits to the pub – she made her way to the bar. In a darkened corner in the back of the pub, a booth full of satyrs she recognized started pawing at the floor and cat-calling her, but a quick glare with her fangs exposed reminded them of who she was.

The bartender, a portly faun, _clip-clopped_ over to her. “What’ll you have tonight, Carmilla?”

She hid an eye-roll. Cú Chulainn was the only bar around that catered exclusively to supernatural beings. There were so many around the Silas area that one of them (she hadn’t quite worked out who yet) had founded a bar dedicated to the supernatural. One of its key rules was that no supernatural creature, no matter how deep the rivalry or hatred, would bring their enmity into this pub. It was a safe haven for every being, no matter what their status was in the larger world. As such, she’d become a regular over her years at Silas. The faun had been there almost as long as she and knew where she was living; anonymously drowning her terrible reaction earlier in the day wouldn’t be an option.

Oh well. “Whiskey. Neat.”

A furry eyebrow rose up his face, but when he met her unwavering stare, he shrugged and poured her a glass. After throwing it back in a single gulp, she grimaced and had to force down her gag reflex. “American whiskey, Pan? What the fuck?”

He gave a rumble low in his throat. “That’s not my name, vampire.”

“And that’s not my drink, faun. You know well enough by now that I only drink Irish whiskey, especially today.”

The faun rubbed his furry head. “I know, Carmilla, I know, but I’m trying to keep that saved back for that crowd over there. It’s like every damned Irish supernatural creature on the Continent showed up. If I run out of their good stuff, who knows what they’ll do to my bar?” he exclaimed, throwing his arm over toward the jukebox.

Following his gesture, Carmilla counted at least a dozen of the short figures. There were a couple selkies, two banshees, a handful of leprechauns, and a few other beings she’d never seen before. “Oh yeah, they’re a bunch of foreign students at Silas. I should have expected they’d be here today.”

Over the din of their conversation, an ancient jukebox blared out tinny, slightly warped versions of classic ballads about despair, drunkenness, destruction, and death. The leprechauns were clustered in a half-circle around the player, almost as if they were protecting it. Which, she reflected, they probably were, as the song changed and _Danny Boy_ ’s mournful tones warbled to her ears. “Just pour me the damn drink. I need it bad today,” she grumped. Smacking the table, she waited for her glass to refill.

And again. And again. And again.

The whiskey burned its way down before the barest pleasant, tingling warmth in her stomach started spreading out to her extremities. _Damn vampire constitutions anyway_. Slamming the shot glass down once more, she waved the bartender back over. “As hilarious as it is to keep pouring shot after shot for me, let’s pretend I’m an adult and leave the damn bottle, m’kay?”

Her saccharine sweetness wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all a faun who had been behind the bar for so many years. “That was your fifth shot. If I let you have any more, I’d be an accessory to whatever you do when you stumble out of here.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me I’m drunk,” she growled. “When I slur a word for the first time, you can throw me out on my well-toned ass. Until then, _leave the damn bottle_.”

A bellowing from behind her and to her left caught her attention. Knowing the sound, she shot him a smirk. “Well would you listen to that? The centaurs need their beer trough refilled. Perfect timing, goat-boy.”

Knowing he was beaten, the he slid the clear glass bottle over in front of her. Catching it right below its golden shield label, she poured herself another shot and downed it in one gulp, eyes never breaking contact with the bartender’s. He shook his head and went off to grab another barrel of beer for the centaurs, muttering under his breath.

It was his lucky day that she was in a mood to ignore the insult he tried to hide. She was there to burn away her sorrows and self-loathing, not take them out on mouthy bottle-jockeys.

There were few places better to wallow in private self-pity than an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day. Most of the beings in the pub were in a celebratory mood, lubricated by truly heroic quantities of stouts, whiskies, cordials, potions, and the random round of car bombs, but true to celebrations around the world, a significant portion of the music being played hearkened to sadness and tragedy instead of good times.

Swirling the amber liquid in front of her, Carmilla tried to lose herself to the world. Her traitorous heart – that organ she worked so hard to deny was even functional anymore – whispered promises she was afraid to trust. Her mind, usually her refuge when the lonesome emotions threatened to overtake her fragile strength, betrayed her, replaying scenes from room 307 on a loop. Images of their first kiss, their first whispered ‘I love you’, the first time they locked the door to their room (followed immediately by Laura attempting to push the armoire in front of it just in case one of the Ginger Squad got a little overzealous), and other moments she would treasure forever flashed through her mind.

All leading up to that evening when it had all gone wrong. Self-loathing filled her.

How could such a magic night that started with such promise go so horribly, terribly wrong? Laura was so much better with emotions and expressing them than she was. Usually that was a good thing, but Carmilla had picked the absolute worst moment ever to fixate on the wrong word her girlfriend uttered.

And here she was, drinking whiskey in a bar instead of drinking in her girlfriend’s love at home.

Just then the chorus of a song over the jukebox broke through her concentration.

 _So here's to those that are dead and gone_  
_The friends that I loved dear_  
_And here's to you then I'll bid you adieu_

The last line broke her. As silent tears coursed down her face, Carmilla took scant comfort in the small mercy that her hair fell over her face, hiding her misery from any that would care to see.

So many faces dead and gone. A vampire’s eternal life wasn’t considered a curse because it kept them from the sweet embrace of the afterlife; it was a curse because they had to watch every friend and relative die. Over and over and over. Forever. Every face she’d ever cared about was gone. Her mother and father were dead. Even Will and Mother, who were all the family she’d had for centuries (as bad as they had been), were dead. The cycle would repeat itself, putting her through this misery once more.

Happiness was there for the taking, but she couldn’t get over herself. It was a cold, desolate future stretching out endlessly in front of her.

She was about to get off her stool and find a dark hole to crawl inside when a wooden stick landed heavily on the bar in front of her. Looking closely, she saw that it was pointed at one end. Ordinarily, that would be cause to either fight or flee, but a sniff of the newcomer’s scent told her who found her.

Before Carmilla could challenge her accoster, she heard a far too casual voice from directly behind her. “I promised you once that I’d be back with my stake if you hurt her, Dead Girl.”

“ _Póg mo thóin_ , (1) Xena,” she shot back without turning around.

Danny sat down on the stool next to hers, grabbing and examining the bottle to see what she was drinking. “ _Uisce beatha_. (2) Is it tragic or ironic for a vampire to drink the water of life?”

“Is there a point to this conversation or are you trying to seduce me with your dazzling command of the Irish language?” Carmilla drawled.

Danny’s eyes widened. “Wow. You must be pretty badly off if you’re here in this pub trying to drink yourself stupider while your girlfriend and my sort of ex is alternating between scouring every inch of the campus for you and sobbing her eyes out on Lafontaine’s shoulder because she doesn’t know what the hell happened.”

That got Carmilla’s attention. Turning to look at Danny, her confusion turned to disbelief and she burst out laughing at the taller woman’s appearance. A green bead necklace with plastic shamrocks hung around her neck, complemented by a headband with two pots of gold on little springs. Her eye shadow was a deep green, and she had a shamrock painted on one cheek. The worst of the whole getup was her tacky green t-shirt. “Wow, Jolly Red. You look like one of those leprechauns threw up all over you.”

Rolling her eyes, Danny signaled the bartender for another glass. When it slid down the bar – the guy was still unwilling to personally serve Carmilla or anyone with her – she caught it and poured herself a drink before refilling the vampire’s glass. “ _Slainte_ ,” she toasted before downing the drink. She started choking almost immediately.

Carmilla had to force down her laughter at the redhead’s coughing fit. “Too much tequila at those Summer Society parties, eh Red?” she snarked.

Danny’s only response was a flip of her middle finger as she struggled to get her breathing under control.

“Amateur,” Carmilla grinned. “ _Croi follain agus gob fliuch_.” (3) As she put her glass back on the bar, she couldn’t decide if the flush that matched Danny’s hair spreading over her entire countenance at her toast’s innuendo or the consternation on the younger woman’s face at how easily she’d downed her own shot was funnier.

“Fuck you,” Danny finally rasped.

“Sorry. That job is taken,” came Carmilla’s automatic reply. As soon as the words left her lips, a shadowy pain crossed her face too fast to hide from her…friend? Close enough. The redhead had actually saved her life, Carmilla had to admit.

Danny didn’t let the opening pass. “So what the fuck are you doing here in this pub instead of being all disgustingly cute with your girlfriend?”

Carmilla was silent for a long moment, debating the merits of sharing something so intensely personal with someone she wasn’t even dating. The silence went on so long that Danny rolled her eyes. “I saved your life back in the pit under the Lustig, Elvira. And my reward was to watch Laura try to stick her tongue down your throat. You owe me the truth.”

“I go to an Irish pub every St. Patrick’s Day no matter where I am in the world,” Carmilla replied in voice so soft that she wasn’t sure Danny could even hear it, but since the younger woman didn’t ask her to repeat herself, she kept going. “I know Laura gave you my tearful backstory, but after I was murdered, Mother had me doing the whole seduce-the-virgins-for-the-sacrifice thing right away. Every twenty years we had to have a few more, but other than that time, she really didn’t have a huge need for me. I stayed near her for the first couple cycles, but afterward I had to get away.

“I spent a lot of my time in Paris. In the late eighteenth century it was a tense time. Lots of drama between the common people and the upper classes. Society was basically coming apart at the seams leading up to the Revolution. It was a fascinating place to study changing social dynamic,” she drawled, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

She stopped as Danny poured each of them another drink. Wordlessly clinking their glasses together, Carmilla downed her shot and watched as Danny did the same, only coughing once.

Before Carmilla could continue her story, a sultry voice from behind them curled up and around, husky tones oozing sensuality. “Oh my, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

They turned to regard a young woman with a seductive smile. Her glittering eyes somehow managed to be an exact sea-green shade while her hair hung in waves of chocolate. The woman’s pale ivory dress hung in a shimmering wave around her.

“Can I help you, nymph?” Carmilla drawled.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Mircalla darling,” the nymph responded. “I was hoping to spend some time with tall, red, and devastating here.”

Danny’s face turned the same color as her hair again. “I, ah, well, that’s very f-flattering,” she stammered before freezing when Carmilla’s arm went around her shoulders.

“Sorry, but she’s with me. So sad!” the vampire simpered.

With an indignant huff, the nymph glided her way back into the pub, looking for another victim.

Carmilla and Danny turned back to the bar with the earlier rapport replaced by an awkwardness neither expected.

“I’m sorry,” Carmilla apologized, noting the way Danny’s eyes widened at her apology. “I thought that would be the quickest way to send her off.”

Danny waved off the apology. “No harm, no foul,” she dismissed as the tension visibly left her shoulders. “Thanks. So, you were saying?”

The brunette grinned. “So yeah, in the late 1790s, there were rumors that the Irish were planning some rebellion against England. It surprised me a little to read, so I tried to find out everything I could about Ireland.”

“Why?”

Danny’s voice was softer than Carmilla expected. Looking at the younger woman, she saw the genuine interest on her face. Pausing to refill their glasses again, she took stock of her memories. “I think it was the idea that they were oppressed. I was getting fed up with my mother by that point. Knowing what she was most likely doing to those poor girls and my role in it was positively nauseating. Learning about the way the English treated Ireland made it feel like there was a kinship of sorts.”

Danny nodded. “That makes sense in a weird kind of way.”

“Gee, thanks, Red.” Carmilla rolled her eyes.

“Anyway…” the redhead gestured for her to continue.

“Anyway, I went to Ireland in 1797. It was lucky that I got there when I did. My ship landed in Cork, one of the biggest ports on the southern coast. The 1798 rebellion happened mainly in the east, so I was outside the worst of it. When it failed, I had to go back to Styria for another round of luring the innocents.”

“That can’t be the end of the story,” Danny interjected.

Carmilla gave a dark chuckle as she shook her head. “Not at all. I was in Austria when the United Kingdom came into existence, as soon as I got done finding the victims for Mother, I went back to Ireland. It was awful. The people there were in such bad shape, but that wasn’t anything compared to the Great Famine forty years later. I returned to Ireland after helping Mother again in time to see half the country either starve or leave.” Her voice wavered at the memory of such agony.

She stopped in surprise as Danny dared to reach out and put a comforting hand on her forearm. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Thanks,” the vampire nodded. “It would have been a great time for any other vampire with all the dying people to feed off of, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Danny poured another drink for them both. “So what did you do?”

An evil grin came over Carmilla’s face. She turned to the younger woman with her fangs extended just a bit past her lips. “One night as I was walking past a dark alley in Dublin, I head a scuffle and a scream. A woman’s scream. I kept to the shadows, slinking toward the fight, and found five British soldiers dragging a local girl behind a building. Being a vampire has its advantages, like being able to move too fast for the average human to see. The next thing that poor girl knew, she was waking up in a house down the street.”

Danny took a breath but hesitated as if she didn’t want to ask the obvious question. “And the soldiers?”

Carmilla’s evil grin intensified as her fangs extended fully. “Let’s just say there’s a reason the British soldiers told a rumor of an angel of death that stalked their barracks during that time.”

As recently as a year ago Danny would have shuddered at both the look on Carmilla’s face and the implications of her statement, but after taking down the Dean, she figured not much could shock her anymore. She actually laughed. “Good for you.”

“That was the last time I was in Ireland before…,” Carmilla paused, collecting herself and looking back through her memories, “It was just after that that I met Elle in New York, and, well, you know what happened. Mother buried me in 1862 and I didn’t get out until the second Great War when the bombs freed me.”

A faraway look came over her face. “I would have loved to have been in Ireland for the Easter Rising,” she said, “but I had to study that one in the history books.”

“What about recently?” Danny prodded.

“Trust me: it was enough of a shock to find out that most of Ireland was free, and bloodlessly on top of that. Dublin was my home base in the old days. Easy for a creature of the night to disappear in a larger city, and that was where the British soldiers were based. They were the most tempting targets,” she smirked, “but after the war I started going to Belfast.”

“You were there during the Troubles,” Danny stated, understanding where she was going. Waiting for Carmilla’s response, she reached out and poured the last of the whiskey into their glasses.

“Yeah I was,” the brunette nodded after tossing off her drink. “Bloody Sunday was bad enough but never knowing when the next bomb was going to go off or the next drive-by was going to happen made things ridiculous. So, every St. Patrick’s Day I go to a pub to remember how much Ireland has overcome and how far they still have to go.”

“Kind of like you,” Danny nodded. She had a momentary pang of envy at the way Carmilla was able to drink as much as she wanted without feeling the effects of the alcohol. She was only a few rounds in and was already starting to feel her head swim. “So…so that was a nice history lesson and all, but what are you doing here instead of being with Laura?” she asked, getting back to the reason she was there in the first place.

Carmilla only paused a moment before reaching into her pocket. She slid the small, velvet box over in front of Danny without a word.

“Ho-ly sh-it,” the redhead breathed, taking the box in her hand.

Carmilla grunted. “Yup.”

“So you…”

“Love her like I never thought would be possible for me? Yeah, I do,” Carmilla deadpanned.

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here instead of putting this ring on her finger,” Danny prodded, handing the box back.

With a growl, Carmilla stared at the box in front of her, trying to find the words to explain her hesitation. “Laura told me she loved me and wanted to be with me forever,” she finally allowed, hating how small and weak her voice sounded.

“Yeah, that’s a real bitch of a problem,” Danny deadpanned, “If I had someone like her tell me that, I’d totally be getting wasted in a bar somewhere, too.”

“Shut _up!_ God, you are so annoying sometimes,” Carmilla growled, though her anger was mostly self-directed. Mostly.

“Then I’m going to need a lot more of an explanation, Dead Girl,” Danny shot back, but there was no malice in her voice. Rather, she was trying to be subtly encouraging, knowing that Carmilla wasn’t someone who would respond well to pity.

Carmilla snarled as she signaled for another bottle of whiskey. When the bartender hesitated again, she gave him such a malevolent glare that he almost fell down in his hurry to get her the drink. “As soon as she said the word ‘forever’, all I could think of was Paris, Elle, and Ireland. My forever is so different from hers. What if she ends up deciding she doesn’t want that? What if she doesn’t want me?”

Danny burst out laughing, an intoxicated guffaw that caught the attention of almost everyone else in the pub. She waved apologetically before staring at Carmilla until the brunette met her gaze. “That’s the problem? The big bad heroic vampire who killed a demon with a light-eating sword is scared of five feet and ninety pounds of sugared-up journalist?”

With a scowl, Carmilla looked back at the glass in front of her. “Tell me you wouldn’t be scared, too, Xena.”

“I probably would,” Danny admitted, “but do you know the difference?”

Carmilla looked at her friend wordlessly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the redhead to explain why she was a more compatible partner for Laura.

“I wouldn’t let that stop me. I’d want to give her the opportunity to make the choice,” came Danny’s calm, steady reply. “Anyone with eyes knows how far Laura would go for you. Don’t you think after she saved your life twice that you owe her at least that much too?”

The vampire remained silent, not daring to believe the promise of hope that her friend was offering.

With a sigh, Danny kept going. “Listen, it’s hard enough encouraging someone to propose to a girl I was crushing on so hard, but you two just make each other better. I don’t think I’ve seen her happier than when you woke up after the battle. After taking down the light demon and the Dean, what else is there that could possibly scare you?”

“Are you really sure?” Carmilla asked her glass.

“What other day would be luckier than today for asking her?” Danny laughed.

Carmilla looked at her, trying to discern if she was being mocked. When Danny’s face didn’t show any signs of teasing, she blew out a laugh that was 98 percent relief. Knowing she had to make things right with her girlfriend and hopefully get to the point where she could pop the question, she slammed another glass of liquid courage. “Thanks, Danny,” she said, hoping that her use of the redhead’s real name instead of a teasing nickname would show just how grateful she really was.

“Go get her, Carmilla,” Danny responded in kind, holding up a full glass. “ _Go maire sibh bhur saol nua._ (4)”

Carmilla gave her a smile and nod before turning and leaving the bar. She only got a few steps outside before remembering something vital. When she went back inside the pub and approached the bar, she saw that Danny had noticed what she forgot. Facing away from the door, her right hand was propped on the bar holding the ring box and her shoulders were shaking with laughter.

“Shut up,” Carmilla snapped as she took the box and shoved it back in her pocket.

“All the luck, Dead Girl,” Danny said to her back.

_Here goes nothing._

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Kiss my ass  
> 2 The Water of life  
> 3 A healthy heart and a wet mouth!  
> 4 May you enjoy your new life
> 
> Constructive feedback is always welcome!


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